Opinion: In today’s pages: Bailouts, teachers and enemy combatants

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The Times editorial board weighs in today on President-elect Barack Obama’s economic brain trust, especially two top advisors who represent a very different set of constituents. New York Federal Reserve chief Timothy F. Geithner, Obama’s pick for Treasury secretary, has helped funnel billions in tax dollars toward financial institutions, while former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Obama’s choice for director of the National Economic Council, favors vast spending on another economic stimulus package. It’s an appropriate approach given the extent of our financial troubles, but the new administration needs to do more than just broaden its focus beyond Wall Street: It needs to come up with a better rationale for when and when not to intervene in the market.

We also editorialize on the increasingly bizarre trial of the men accused of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. After a military court decided to open its doors to journalists, they were abruptly shut again by a judge who claimed jurors feared for their safety -- yet one of the jurors subsequently told radio listeners that the jurors hadn’t sought a closed court and had refused to sign a statement requesting a media ban. The Russian justice system itself is on trial in this case, so the judge needs to find a way to guarantee both jurors’ safety and the security of state secrets.

Lastly, The Times points out that the still-undecided state Senate race between Republican Tony Strickland and Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson doesn’t make a strong case for redistricting -- but it’s a good idea anyway. Strickland and Jackson ran the kind of polarizing, old-school campaign common in today’s ‘safe’ districts, even though their 19th Senate District contains a pretty even match of Republicans and Democrats. The idea of Proposition 11 on the Nov. 4 ballot is to end gerrymandering and make more districts similar to the 19th, with the goal of forcing politicians to listen to a broader cross-section of their constituents and thus encouraging more centrist lawmakers. It’s a solid notion, even if it didn’t quite work in the case of Strickland and Jackson.

On the Op-Ed page, columnist Jonah Goldberg calls public-school teachers’ unions ‘arguably the single worst mainstream institution in our country today.’ Goldberg is tired of conservatives accusing President-elect Barack Obama of hypocrisy for sending his children to expensive private schools while rejecting vouchers that would allow poor families to do the same, and even more tired of Democratic politicians in thrall to teachers’ unions. Both sides simply need to stop tolerating awful schools.

Also, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari man arrested in 2001 and never tried because he was labeled an ‘enemy combatant,’ calls his client’s detention ‘a radical departure from America’s deepest values, a moment when our country lost its bearings.’

Finally, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, urges Americans to do a better job of looking after their veterans and the families of those who have been killed in action.

* Illustration by Jonathan Twingley / For The Times